Tag: healthcare innovation
Over the next three years, 66% of healthcare executives are planning to increase their investment in digital twin, states a recent digital health technology report. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital twin technology has been playing a key role in aiding healthcare professionals. Digital twin is used to optimize the usage of ventilators for critical patients, support contactless temperature scanning, reduce person-to-person contact, trial drugs, and prevent the risk of disease transmission. In the post-COVID-19 era too, medical researchers can leverage digital twins to analyze the existing data and study the impact caused on the human body.
In this blog, we’ll take you through what is digital twin technology and how it’s creating an impact in the healthcare industry? Let’s checkout!
The Role of Digital Twin in Healthcare
Digital twin technology allows you to replicate the physical world in a digital layout. A digital twin is a virtual model of a device, object, or process that operates in real-time to update data when changes are made. Researchers rely on digital twins to test new scenarios in real-life environments with improved safety and cost-effectiveness. In the past, the application of digital twins was limited to sectors such as industrial engineering and manufacturing. It was economically unviable to build digital twins in other fields like healthcare and education. The proliferation and affordability of innovative technologies such as IoT, AI, ML, AR, VR, and XR are accelerating the adoption of digital twins in healthcare.
Read more: The Application and Impact of Information Technology in Healthcare
The healthcare industry is constantly striving to enhance patient outcomes, reduce operating costs, and address unforeseen medical crises effectively. The US-based Digital Twin Consortium observes that digital twin technology has the potential to improve patient turnaround, reduce patient wait times, optimize equipment utilization, cut staffing expenses, and minimize bed shortages. It helps personalize medicines based on real-time data and improve the operational efficiency and performance of healthcare organizations by identifying workflow bottlenecks and scheduling optimization.
Top 5 Applications of Digital Twin in Healthcare
Digital twins allow the creation of handy virtual models and medical simulations based on the data gathered from wearable devices, patient records, drugs and pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturers, and other healthcare departments. This helps streamline the overall clinical and caregiving processes. Listed here are the top five applications of medical digital twins:
1. Customize treatments and drug administration
Digital twins allow physicians, hospitals, and clinics to deliver patient-centric care by leveraging precision medicine. Data stored in healthcare mobile apps, medical software, wearables, fitness trackers, and other medical devices can be captured into digital twins which enables doctors and front-line health workers to address patients with persistent or critical conditions. For example, combining AI-powered anatomical analysis with the virtual model of a patient’s heart helps understand the progression of heart diseases over time. It enables medical researchers to identify how the patient will respond to new drugs, treatments, or surgical intercessions. Digital twin experiments are also conducted to analyze the progression of neurogenerative ailments such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
2. Advance surgical procedure planning
Digital twin technology enables brain and heart surgeons to run virtual simulations of surgical procedures prior to executing complex surgeries. Testing pre-operative and post-operative surgical procedures and outcomes on a digital replica of human body parts reduces the risk of hampering human health. Advanced, patient-specific computational models of human organs help plan and augment complex surgical interventions with improved precision and care.
Read more: How Virtual Reality Benefits Autistic Patients
3. Enhance caregivers’ efficiency and experience
Digital twins support caregivers to gain a consolidated view of patient data scattered across various medical applications, physicians, and specialists. Technologies like Natural Language Processing (NLP) help infer the data and summarize the medical history of each patient. Capturing patient-specific information onto your medical dashboard throws better light into the context of each patient. This improves your clinical decision-making ability.
Digital twin model of a hospital allows you to measure the impact of organizational changes. For instance, you can use the virtual model to test new operational strategies, care delivery programs, staffing rotation, appointment scheduling, hospital bed facilities, surgical schedules, and so on. This helps redesign your organization’s workflow, improve coordination among various departments, and reduce the treatment window.
Case Study: How Fingent’s healthcare technology solution helped improve collaboration between doctors, patients, and caregivers
4. Test new medical devices and drugs
Federal drug regulators such as the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agency as well as the European Medicines Agency (EMA) propose using AI algorithms to determine the safety and effectiveness of pilot drugs. Digital twins can simulate the health traits of a larger number of patients which helps analyze how a drug’s usage will impact a wider population. Using several inclusion and exclusion paradigms, AI helps pace up drug trials by identifying the willingness and availability of patients. Digital twins can also mitigate the harmful impact of experimental drugs and reduce the number of patients who need to undergo real-world testing.
It takes more than $2 billion to manufacture and launch a new drug into the market. Trial phase alone costs heavily and over 90% of treatments fail during this period. Capitalizing on technologies like machine learning and computational modeling helps expedite the early stages of drug design, development, and safety evaluation. Digital twins integrate the test data across various samples to give a holistic picture of the drug’s effect on patients.
5. Improve supply chain flexibility
The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic weakened our supply chains due to the lockdowns and transportation bans across various countries. This resulted in the shortage of essential healthcare supplies. Digital twins allow healthcare organizations to create robust contingency plans to address such unpredicted events, increase bed capacity, manage emergencies during shutdowns or shortages, offer remote patient care, and design and construct new medical facilities to reach out to more patients. Hospitals, labs, and healthcare establishments can remodel their supply chain relationships to create alternative plans, improve collaboration with suppliers, and team up with authorities to plan and negotiate.
Read more: Why is it better to outsource custom healthcare software development
Make The Most of Digital Twins with Fingent
Healthcare application development experts at Fingent help you overcome the hurdles that defer digital twin adoption such as data gathering, quality of clinical trial datasets, and information security and privacy. We develop custom healthcare apps leveraging technologies such as VR, AI, ML, and IoT that enable you to virtually test innovations and deliver exceptional patient care. These solutions can be tailored to optimize both your clinical and operational functions. For instance, we help you develop virtual simulators for ACLS (Advanced Cardiac Life Support System), accident trauma care standard operating procedure, an orthopedic or cardiac surgical procedure involving complex tools, and Neo-natal Resuscitation Simulator (GOLDEN MINUTE PROTOCOL).
Read more: How Virtual Reality Improves the Standards of Medical Education and Training
Besides VR, healthcare providers can benefit from various customizable solutions such as connected healthcare apps powered by IoT, integrated medical dashboard software, remote patient monitoring systems, and healthcare analytics applications. Improve your organization’s technology ecosystem with Fingent top software development company. Contact us to design digital twins and drive innovation.
With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare industry is spiraling at an unexpected speed and is continuously inventing healthcare solutions to drive streamlined operations. Medical organizations are now largely depending on custom healthcare software solutions to maintain medical history, electronic health records, patient’s personal information, and other medical data to provide better patient care and health services. This blog will take you through why your healthcare organization needs to invest in custom healthcare software development, and how it’s beneficial to outsource it!
What is custom healthcare software development?
Today, healthcare is driven by technological innovations such as big data, electronic patient record systems, interoperability, and machine learning. The need for this is to provide better patient experiences and improve health outcomes. To achieve this, there is a need for professionally designed tools and solutions that can help healthcare providers to deliver patient-first and cost-effective care.
Custom healthcare software development is the process of creating web or mobile apps for medical professionals so they can interact with patients better, use medical data analytics, and access patient health records.
Examples of how custom software development has transformed the healthcare industry include;
- Tools such as Hospital Management Systems (HMS) or Hospital Information System (HIS) are comprehensive integrated solutions that handle different aspects of hospital or clinic’s workflow efficiently.
- An Electronic Health Record (EHR) system collects a patient’s data and history and stores it in a digital format that makes sharing across different healthcare systems easy.
- Mobile apps and wearable devices are serving several health aspects.
Read more: Augmented Reality in Healthcare: The Industry Future!
Key benefits of custom healthcare software
1. Tailor-made solution
Software solutions built specifically catering to your organizational needs help deliver better customer services. Especially when it concerns providing patient-care services, it is always recommended to invest in custom or tailormade solutions. An off-the-shelf or packaged solution, in comparison to a custom software solution, may or may not be able to meet your organization’s requirements or even work well within a specific type of facility. A custom software solution will help solve your business-specific complexes and will help meet your business goals.
2. Streamline processes
Undoubtedly, technology enables us to get our work done efficiently and more accurately. A custom software solution can have a far-reaching impact. It frees your staff to allow them to focus on patient care.
3. Personalized care
Today, patients want to understand their health on their own and expect personalized services from their healthcare provider. This is why there is an increasing demand for telemedicine, at-home testing kits, and health apps.
4. Enhanced security
Custom healthcare software solutions are built in compliance with the industry standards and guarantee that personal data stays secure and confidential. An app must comply with Open Web Application Security Project standards and other certifications, to be approved.
When it comes to creating custom healthcare software, organizations can;
- Leverage any open-source platform to create a customizable solution without the need for coding
- Outsource the entire custom software development process to a reliable development agency.
Read more: Why Healthcare Prefers Prescriptive Analytics Over Predictive Analytics
Advantages of outsourcing healthcare software development
1. Economical and effective
By outsourcing to a third-party offshore company, you can save a lot of costs. It helps save largely on the cost of developing application infrastructure, recruiting professionals, training the recruits, and deployment and pre-installation set-up costs. Most service providers use advanced technology that would fit your budget.
2. Experienced team
While some projects require a large pool of software developers others may not. In such cases, it may be difficult to hire software developers and then relieve them after completing the work as it involves a huge cost to hire, set up infrastructure, and team. Therefore, outsourcing custom healthcare software development gives you the leeway to scale up or down resources as per your project requirements.
3. Agile and scalable solutions
In-house healthcare developers are usually burdened with several other tasks which cause them to lose focus and compromise on the delivery of the app. Collaborating with a third-party agency will provide you with the flexibility of managing the resources and whenever you need them. This will also help you include scalable software developers to build an app that is more agile and consistent.
4. Quick time to market
Outsourcing the custom development task will give you access to experts from healthcare domains to develop your applications. This will ensure your app be superior,well-grained, and reach the market faster so patients can be treated faster.
5. Increased productivity
As offshore developers are qualified and talented enough to develop your app, you won’t have to burden them with briefings and preparations. This will allow you to focus on improving the critical and core healthcare services of your organization thus improving the results significantly.
Read more: Healthcare Analytics Reaches New Heights with SAP HANA
Cost of outsourcing custom healthcare software development
When it comes to the healthcare industry, the average cost of an experienced developer is not cheap. That is why 59% of global companies outsource software development. While the costs vary from country to country, you will still save about 40-70% of the total costs. For example, the average hourly cost for a software developer in the US is $65–$130 per hour while the hourly cost of offshore developers in Asia and Africa is $20–45.
Why choose Fingent?
If you need custom healthcare software for your organization, Fingent top custom software development company is your trusted partner.
- We have a pool of experienced and skilled developers who can help you identify the right solution for your business complexities.
- Our agile methodology of development ensures client involvement at every stage so that the solution is scalable, cost-effective, as well as caters to specific client requirements.
- We offer transparent offshore development services in terms of overhead costs and recruitment fees.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for custom healthcare software development cannot be denied. Our developers are not only affordable but can add much value in terms of talent and skill to your organization. Connect with our experts today!
Top Healthcare Digitalization Trends To Look For In The New Normal
Healthcare digitalization is reshaping the way we interact with healthcare professionals, share medical data or make decisions related to treatment and outcomes. There are plenty of examples that substantiate the digitalization of healthcare today, such as Artificial Intelligence-powered medical devices, telemedicine, blockchain, remote-patient monitoring, and electronic health records.
The main aim of healthcare innovation is to streamline the medical professionals’ work, optimize medical software systems, reduce human errors, improve patient outcomes, and lower costs through integrated web and mobile experiences.
Read more: The Application and Impact of Information Technology in Healthcare
Let’s look at the state of healthcare digitalization in 2024 and beyond:
1. On-demand Healthcare Will Grow
With the COVID-19 pandemic restricting many people to remain indoors, more and more patients seek on-demand healthcare. It is convenient as it helps patients seek guidance at their own time and from anywhere they need it.
DMN3 reveals that patients obtain online medical information primarily for the following reasons:
- 77% for booking medical appointments
- 47% for searching information about doctors and healthcare professionals
- 38% for searching information about hospitals and medical facilities
That said, on-demand healthcare is rising due to the growth of the gig economy. Here, freelance professionals from various industries hire themselves out per job or ‘gig’ instead of sticking to one company.
Read more: Patient Engagement Platforms: 7 Must-have Features
Many online healthcare marketplaces link doctors directly with short-term tasks, making it easier for physicians to deliver patient care in specific circumstances based on their expertise and schedule. Simply put, doctors are becoming on-demand healthcare providers to meet the changing needs of their patients in a better way.
2. Big Data Will Be Used To Improve Healthcare Management
Big data is the information gathered from various platforms such as eCommerce, social media, online transactions, and financial transactions. It helps identify patterns and trends for future use.
Read more: 5 Ways Big Data is Changing the Healthcare Industry
For healthcare, big data offers benefits such as:
- Reduced medication errors: Patient record analysis allows the healthcare software to flag any inconsistencies between a patient’s health and drug prescriptions. This alerts the health professionals and patients in case there is a potential risk of a medication error.
- Simplifying preventive care: Many recurring patients stepping into emergency rooms are “frequent flyers.” These frequent flyers account for up to 28% of clinical visits. Big data analysis helps identify these recurring patients and create preventive plans to keep them from returning.
- Improved staffing: Using big data’s predictive analysis, hospitals and clinics can estimate future admission rates enabling these facilities to allocate proper staff to deal with the patient. This will help save money and reduce emergency room waiting time, especially when a facility is understaffed.
Case Study: How did a data analytics solution help NHS gain financial, clinical, and geographical insights to improve visibility over their KPIs? Read Now!
Big data analytics, visualization, and insights generation can improve healthcare operations management and transform the patient experience.
3. Virtual Reality Will Transform Medical Training & Care Delivery Models
Virtual Reality is one of the most outstanding healthcare digitalization trends that change the way patients are diagnosed, and medical residents are trained.
- VR in medical diagnosis & treatments: VR is increasingly used in treatment segments in healthcare, such as patient education, robotic surgery, physical and psychological therapy, etc. For instance, medical professionals can use VR to construct a 360° patient-specific video detailing how the surgery will help the patient cure and the consequent results. Virtual Reality has been found effective in treating anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and stroke.
Case Study: Find how Fingent developed a unique mixed reality application for a leading university that enables users to identify people using facial recognition. Download Now!
- VR for medical training: Other uses of VR technology include doctors and medical residents using VR simulations to hone their skills (learning in near-real situations) and safely plan complicated surgeries. In addition, VR headsets are used post-surgery to encourage patients to exercise and follow physiotherapies. The technology also enables autistic children to learn and navigate the world.
- Growth of VR in the medical field: From startups to established pharma companies, everyone recognizes the role of VR in healthcare. Experts estimate that by 2025 the global virtual and augmented reality in healthcare will reach $5.1 billion market value. So, if you’re a healthcare company wanting to improve your digital marketing strategy, you should consider investing in VR.
Read more: How Virtual Reality Improves The Standards Of Medical Education And Training
Virtual Reality technology offers a powerful communication channel that allows you to understand customers’ needs better and virtually engage them with your products and services.
4. Wearable Medical Devices Will Enjoy A Wider Market
Another major healthcare digitalization trend is companies collecting their health data from medical devices such as wearables. Previously, most people would check in with their doctors only when something went wrong and were used to undergoing physical check-ups once a year. However, technology is changing that. Today, people highly focus on preventive maintenance and are interested in knowing about their health status frequently. This trend forces several healthcare companies to invest in wearable technology devices that allow patients or family members to track health vitals and seek medical aid when needed. Wearable medical devices enable up-to-date monitoring of high-risk patients and determine the likelihood of any severe health risk.
Experts estimate that the wearable medical device market value will cross USD 27,200 mn by 2023.
Following are some of the widely used wearable devices:
- Exercise trackers (Google Fit, Fitbit, etc.)
- Heart rate sensors (Samsung Heart Rate Sensor, Pulse Sensor, etc.)
- Sweat meters: to monitor blood sugar levels of diabetics
- Oximeters: to monitor the amount of oxygen carried in the blood
Wearable devices in healthcare offer the following benefits:
- Personalized healthcare experience: Medical devices help patients improve their health and give them a sense of ownership regarding personal healthcare management.
- Insurance pricing: Wearable devices provide insurers with insights that enable them to rate a patient’s risk for illness more accurately.
- Insurance incentives: Wearable devices allow patients to take preventive measures to improve their health. Such patients are more likely to obtain lower insurance premiums.
- Gamification opportunities: Fitness watches can help create competitive goals for users to achieve through diet, nutrition, and exercise.
Case Study: Read more about how Fingent helped create a fitness Regimen app for trainers.
5. Healthcare AI Investments Will Increase
By 2025, the healthcare AI-enabled tools market is expected to exceed $34 billion globally. This indicates that healthcare AI investments will peak soon as Artificial Intelligence is set to transform various segments in medicine.
AI-powered chatbots and virtual health assistants fulfill many roles in the healthcare industry, such as customer service representatives, diagnostic tools, or even therapists. Hence AI in healthcare is gaining immense popularity. According to a report published by MarketsandMarkets, the global healthcare chatbots market is estimated to reach $314.3 million by 2023.
Read more: 5 Leading Chatbot Use Cases Explained with Real-life Examples
That said, we can witness the real power of AI in diverse areas such as medical imaging, drug discovery, precision medicine, and genomics. For example, the first-ever drug designed by AI is showing some promise to help patients suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder. The AI-made drug molecule, DSP-1181, is in clinical trials currently. Researchers and scientists expect that the use of AI will make drug development faster and more efficient.
Overall, AI is projected to bring USD 150 billion by 2026 in annual savings for the US healthcare economy. As start-ups are lapping up the opportunity, the number of active AI start-ups has increased 14 times since 2000.
Why Keep A Close Eye On These Healthcare Digitalization Trends
These five healthcare digitalization trends will spill over in the future as the industry will innovate and adapt to meet the patients’ demands. As a result, organizations that embrace healthcare digitalization will see dividends sooner.
Fingent top custom software development company, helps you navigate the digital healthcare space and adapt to the ‘Next Normal’ with our transformative experiences. Our custom healthcare software solutions have helped many of the leading healthcare providers worldwide. Contact us to learn more about how your healthcare organization or clinic can leverage healthcare digitalization effectively.
Mixed Reality Promising a New Improved Healthcare Industry
Mixed Reality makes it possible for surgeons to perform an operation on a patient thousands of miles away. It makes it possible for nurses to hone their skills and perform hundreds of operations virtually before even touching a patient. Mixed Reality is making the impossible possible.
Mixed Reality combines the real world with the virtual to create solutions that we never thought possible. It enables effective collaboration between physical and digital objects and has found an integral place and application in healthcare. This blog explores some radical ways in which healthcare is using Mixed Reality for better quality treatment and customer experience.
Mixed Reality Working Wonders in Healthcare
By 2026, AV/VR in the healthcare market is expected to reach 7.05 billion USD showing that Mixed Reality is finding increased application in the healthcare industry. From enabling pre-procedural planning and visualization before surgery to training nurses as they virtually workout challenges they could encounter during real-life procedures, and improving the collaboration and communication between doctors and patients – Mixed Reality is making great things happen. Here are some ways in which this is becoming possible.
1. Immersive Learning for Nurses and Medical Students
Skilled nurses are critical to the healthcare industry. Simulations are the most effective method of educating and preparing nurses to respond appropriately to a variety of situations they might encounter. Mixed Reality can place a nursing student in those specific or rare situations, which may be difficult to arrange for in real clinical settings. Such immersive simulations are much more cost-effective than traditional nursing simulation devices. The education company Pearson has collaborated with Microsoft to launch apps called HoloPatient and HoloHuman. These tools use holograms of patients and help in training healthcare professionals as they diagnose and treat medical problems.
As another achievement in Mixed Reality, St. George’s University in Grenada worked with SphereGen Technologies to develop what is called the ‘Learning Heart.’ The Learning Heart is a study aid that enables users to view the hologram of the heart from all directions and examine its functions. It responds to touch and voice commands and allows users to separate all the parts of the human heart, thus making learning immersive for medical students.
2. Reduced Time and Reduced Human Error in Reconstructive Surgery
Reconstructive surgeries enabled by Mixed Reality with the use of HoloLens have proven to be very successful at the Imperial College at St. Mary’s Hospital, London. According to the team guided by Dr. Philip Pratt, Mixed Reality helps surgeons locate and reconnect major blood vessels. With HoloLens, surgeons are able to use holographic overlays to see the bones and identify the course of blood vessels which aids them in their surgery, improving the outcome for the patient. An article in The Times entitled Holograms to get surgeons under the skin of patients showed examples of a 41-year-old man and an 85-year-old woman on whom such reconstructive surgeries were performed successfully.
3. Revolutionizing Surgery
In December 2017, Dr. Thomas Gregory undertook a live transplant surgery with the help of HoloLens. It helped him access the patient’s medical information and anatomical pictures in 3D during the surgery. Since HoloLens is a standalone computer worn like a helmet by the surgeon, his hands are free for surgery. Additionally, the use of microphones and sensors allows the surgeon to communicate with other surgeons in different parts of the world making collaboration easier. All these features, along with the simulations and information it can pull up, make Mixed Reality a valuable asset in improving surgical performance.
4. Improving the Patient Experience
Building trust through efficient communication is an important aspect of a doctor-patient relationship. Mixed Reality makes this possible in a more immersive way. For example, in a recent interview with Sirko Pelzl, CEO and CTO of apoQlar, he spoke about Virtual Surgery Intelligence (VSI) and said: “physicians can use VSI to show patients their own MRI scans and explain the surgical procedure in visual detail. We were able to illustrate in a recent study how greatly patients appreciated this education and communication.”
Mixed Reality also helps in reducing response time and improving surgical accuracy, which contributes to the smooth and successful patient experience. For example, when the surgery is complicated or the patient is critical, diagnostic images with Mixed Reality can serve as a twin of the patient. This helps doctors discuss, plan, and walk through their treatment protocol, thus reducing response time in patient care.
Mixed Reality also gives doctors all the information they need about a patient and enables real-life simulations to help him in his decisions and actions. Commenting on a prototype application called “Cinematic Rendering for Surgery” Christian Zapf, head of the Syngo Business Line at Siemens Healthineers said, “The error rate dropped from 14.1 to 0.8 percent for surgeons in training and from 11.1 percent to 0.8 percent for qualified surgeons.”
https://www.fingent.com/insights/portfolio/future-communication-security-using-augmented-reality/
The Future of Mixed Reality
Mixed Reality has already made deep inroads, especially in medicine. It will continue to improve the quality of healthcare and medical training as it positively impacts the medical industry. Fingent has helped many clients build custom healthcare software solutions, which integrate applications with the latest technologies like Mixed Reality. Get in touch with us and let’s discuss how we can make Mixed Reality possible for you.